A few days ago, I finally received a reply for a Parliamentary Question I had asked the Minister for Employment, whereby I requested the latest numbers of people gainfully employed in the cultural sector. Sadly, the response was not very encouraging as all cultural practitioners, including employed and self-employed, both on a full-time and part-time basis amount to a measly 2,104.
After all these years, and millions spent, I was genuinely expecting better.
Of course, this has got nothing to do with the operators themselves, who work tirelessly and against all odds to turn their passions into careers. The environment within which they operate, however, has sadly deteriorated, making it even harder today for people to choose a profession in the cultural sector.
It has become abundantly clear to everyone, that we have stopped talking about the cultural economy, as the country is finding it extremely hard to look at the arts and culture beyond the lens of entertainment.
From a public participation viewpoint, recent findings of the Malta Arts Council about cultural participation, paint a rather misleading picture, listing village feasts and cinema attendance as taking the lion's share of public cultural participation. While obviously this is great, we can hardly say that having a hot dog at your local marc tal-festa or watching the latest Jason Statham action flick are cultural endeavours.
Perhaps we ought to be honest with ourselves, and look at the challenges head on, rather than trying to disguise them behind smoke and mirrors. For too long have we wrapped up our investment in the cultural sector in a tourism-fuelled drive, in a bid to attract visitors to the country. Once again, this is great, but it shouldn't be the reason why we invest millions in restoration or cultural projects.
Culture is increasingly seen on the European stage, as an independent and potentially lucrative economic player in its own right. When nurtured properly and provided with a sound policy framework on which to develop, the cultural sector can become an opportunity for sustainable activity, which looks beyond hobbyism, or mere entertainment.
Sadly, this government has done the exact opposite. With the government taking an increasingly active role in the cultural sector, it has stifled private initiative, making it extremely hard for artists and cultural practitioners to compete with the bottomless resources of the state. For example, the exorbitantly flashy bonanza that is the Mediterranee Film Festival has effectively and violently elbowed out the indigenous Valletta Film Festival, which had been developing with great grit and vision over many years. What was a genuinely valid and artistically significant exercise in celebrating and recognising film making as an art form, was replaced by an expensive pompous pride project which is still struggling to find its relevance in the country's artistic landscape.
Same can be said about a hundred other state-funded festivals and events which are designed to control rather than empower artistic expression. In most cases, unfortunately they are exercises in distraction and box ticking.
The mismanagement and complete disregard for accountability in the sector, I am sure, discourages scores of promising artists from taking up a career in the arts. For it is extremely disheartening to learn of certain appointments in the sector, who are only there for purely partisan reasons of convenience, embarrassing themselves again and again.
Why do we invest so much in artistic education, our students undoubtedly ask? Why do we encourage our young to study theatre, visual arts, music and the rest, when their jobs are taken up by the usual unqualified suspects?
Now's the time to rethink culture and reframe it within a renewed, strengthened cultural economy in Malta. To bring out its real potential, we need a strategy that is open, fair, and driven by people, one that gives local talent the freedom to grow, encourages creativity, and ensures public funds are used in ways that genuinely benefit the sector sustainably.
A Nationalist government will work side by side with artists, and cultural practitioners who have long been left out of the conversation, putting them back where they should be, at the centre of decisions that shape their industry. Real progress can only happen when ideas are shared, and choices are made together with the people who keep the sector alive.
Because at its heart, Malta's cultural economy is built by its own creators, the filmmakers, artists, designers, sculptors, musicians, writers, and performers whose work captures who we are and what we stand for as a nation.
Julie Zahra is the Opposition's Shadow Minister for Cultural Heritage, Arts, and Culture